OCR Text |
Show 1900.] FROM THE FALKLAND ISLANDS. 533 1888. Paralomis granulosus, Henderson, ' Challenger' Anomura, Eeports, vol. xxvii. p. 45. 1894. Echinocerus granulatus, Benedict, Pr. U.S. Nat. Mus. vol. xvii. p. 484. 1895. Paralomis granulosa, Faxon, M e m . Mus. Comp. Zool. Harvard Coll. vol. xviii. p. 45. 1895. Paralomis granulosa, Bouvier, Ann. Sci. Nat. ser. 7, vol. xviii. p. 186, pi. 11. fig. 9, pi. 12. fig. 11. 1895. Paralomis verrucosa, Bouvier, loc. cit. p. 187, pi. 13. fig. 3. 1896. Paralomis verrucosa, Bouvier, Ann. Sci. Nat. ser. 8, vol. i. pp. 14, 26. 1899. Paralomis verrucosa, Alcock & Anderson, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. ser. 7, vol. iii. p. 15. While M . E. L. Bouvier appears to be certainly right in identifying granulosa with verrucosa, as suggested with less confidence by various other authors, among whom Dana himself may almost be reckoned, it must, I think, be conceded that the name granulosa takes precedence. No doubt its priority depends on the figures in Jacquinot's Atlas, but they give much more information than many an accepted specific description. There are cases in which authors have evidently described species only from figures; Lucas in some instances acknowledges that he had only the figures in Jacquinot's Atlas, and not the corresponding specimens, to guide him. It would be an absurdity to allow authority to a description made from a figure, but to discredit the figure itself. In his synoptic table of the eight species of Paralomis above mentioned, Bouvier separates verrilli, granulosa, formosa, and aspera from the other four, as having the rostrum without any rudiment of projection below. He unites verrilli and granulosa by the common characters : " Acicle long triangular, acute, armed outside with 3 or 4 spines [? teeth] ; carapace covered with verru-cosities or very low and very obtuse tubercles ; chelipeds unequal; walking-legs very compressed." He separates granulosa by the distinctive characters: "The right cheliped reaches considerably beyond the base of the finger of the first walking-leg; it is furnished on the inner margin of the antepenultimate joint with a salient crest armed with 5 or 6 spines [teeth]. Carapace verrucose, except in the large adults, in which it becomes tuberculose. The fourth joint of the walking-legs is compressed from front to rear, the three following joints from above to below. No unpaired gastric spine [tooth]." The species indica and investigatoris of Alcock and Anderson, added to the genus in 1899, both have the walking-legs longer than the chelipeds, and in indica the latter have the wrist not expanded to a foliaceous lobe. The distinction drawn between warts and tubercles is not very easy to appreciate. Of Jacquinot's specimen, only 12 m m . long by 10 broad, Lucas says that the carapace is " entirely covered with little, close-set tubercles, flattened and granular at the top." Miers says of a very young example in the British Museum, " the granulated and wart-like tubercles of the carapace are closely crowded |